791st Marine Strike Group
The 791st Marine Strike Group was a unit of the Star Fleet Marine Corps deployed aboard the cruiser during at least the late 24th century. Nicknames and mottoes The 791st MSG, assigned to the Sixth Battalion of the Seventh Brigade of the Star Fleet Marine Corps, was originally known as the "Dragon Scouts." Later, it changed its nickname to the "Dragon's Fury." For a brief time after that, it used the nickname of the "Dragon Flames." The original unit motto was, "Strength--Wisdom--Imagination--Fighting Spirit." Later, this was revised to read, "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff...and All Stuff is Small Stuff — ooh-rah!!!" As the Dragon Flames, the unit's motto became, "Beware The Wrath Of The Dragon." More recent directives from the Star Fleet Marine Corps reinstated the original nickname and motto, and when Telsek K'Mar resumed command, he had to file a formal request for permission to change the nickname and the motto, and after it was granted, he gave the unit the nickname "The Strike Dragons" and the motto, "Got A Can Opener?" Marine Operational Specialty The unit's primary specialty ("MOS") is Special Operations, or "SpecOps," which includes Intelligence and Covert Operations. The SpecOps motto, drawn from that of the British Special Air Service of old Earth, is "Who Dares Wins." The SpecOps slogan is "Seven years for seven minutes!" This reflects the fact that a SpecOps Star Fleet Marine may train for seven full years to be able to carry out missions not intended to be longer than seven minutes in duration. The SpecOps device is the crossed knives of old Earth mercenaries. History The Andorian nobleman Duke Commander FrioDraca, when he was still a full lieutenant in Star Fleet, was one of its founding Officers-In-Charge, at which time he achieved the grade of Marine captain. Not long after Christopher Thomas Robinson was rescued from eighty-three years of suspended animation and accepted assignment as the Intelligence Officer of the [[USS Sovereign (prototype)|USS Sovereign NCC-75000]], aboard which starship the 791st is deployed, FrioDraca personally recruited him into the 791st and trained him into the Corps through its accelerated training course, which is informally known as "The Crucible." The Crucible is a holographic environmental simulator program that subjects prospective Star Fleet Marines who, as Star Fleet officers, have accepted assignment either to Star Fleet Intelligence or to the Security And Tactical Division of the Star Fleet Support Services Section, to the equivalent of four years of SFMC training in the span of two weeks. Abbreviated command history After the original FrioDraca was killed in action during the Federation-Dominion War, one of his friends and colleagues, Telsek K'Mar, took over as Officer-In-Charge in Frio's stead. Telsek was later assigned to duty on Star Base 217, and his deputy, Christopher Thomas Robinson, who had become a lieutenant colonel in the SFMC, subsequently took over as Officer-In-Charge of the 791st MSG. The recent directives from the SFMC, which followed the completion of Telsek's tour of Star Base 217 duty, relieved Robinson as OIC of the 791st and reassigned him as its Deputy Officer-In-Charge in favor of reinstating Telsek to the post of Officer-In-Charge. As OIC of the 791st, Robinson's main achievement was preventing the unit from being dissolved and maintaining its active status; it was he who changed the unit nickname to the "Dragon Flames" and the motto to "Beware The Wrath Of The Dragon." Those changes were reversed when he was relieved as the unit's OIC. Merger with the dissolved 791st Marine Expeditionary Unit As Telsek K'Mar was bringing his tour of duty aboard Star Base 217 to a close, one of Christopher Thomas Robinson's fellow SFMC officers, Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Stephens, ignored severely compromised intelligence and took the Star Fleet Marine Expeditionary Unit whose Officer-In-Charge he was, MEU No. 791, into an ambush that wiped out so many of its personnel that it was ordered dissolved. Colonel Stephens himself was court-martialed and dismissed from the service for his "hazarding" conduct. Forced to take command of the remaining personnel of MEU 791, Robinson requested, received, and acted upon permission to merge the two units. Even though MEU 791 had been a Battle M.E.C.H.A. unit whereas MSG 791 was a SpecOps unit, Robinson showed a remarkable ability to maintain unit cohesion in spite of his own impetuous character. MEU 791 personnel who showed any preference for M.E.C.H.A. over SpecOps or MSG 791 personnel who showed any more preference for SpecOps over M.E.C.H.A. than their training and experience warranted lost their posts in the unit and, in some cases, were even drummed out of the service; all of these resulted from sentences assigned in courts-martial over which Robinson was forced to serve as President Judge. Robinson's approach to discipline in merging the remains of the dissolved unit with his own existing unit was not universally popular, and Stephens himself blamed Robinson personally for having ruined his Star Fleet Marine Corps career. This led Stephens to sabotage the mecha his former colleagues had used before his dishonorable discharge took effect. As a result, when Robinson tried to use Stephens's own personal "mechum" in a conflict in which the reorganized MSG 791 was involved, it malfunctioned and entrapped him inside. As Telsek's post-Star Base 217 duty assignment had sent him to the same location, he was there, along with the Sovereign's Chief Engineering Officer, Fleet Captain Traci Giorgianni, to assist Robinson. Upon seeing Telsek, Robinson yelled, "GOT A CAN OPENER???" A weaponsmith, Telsek had recently learned how to artifice hand-held opening tools for enclosed metal canisters, called "can openers." These he forged of a tritanium-cadmium alloy with 19.3 times the hardness of the hardest of manganese steels, whose cadmium content protected the tritanium content from radioactive decay. When Stephens's personal mechum, upon malfunctioning, entrapped Robinson inside, one of the malfunctions was to its explosive-bolt ejector system. Were Robinson to have ignited the bolts, the blast would have cremated him alive. Thus Giorgianni, forced to treat the mechum as an un-exploded bomb, found herself forced to employ one of Telsek's can openers to extricate Robinson from the wreckage. Upon the safe return of all hands to the Sovereign, Telsek sought and received formal reinstatement as Officer-In-Charge of MSG 791, as whom he relieved Robinson. Appendices Background information *The 791st MSG is also a unit of the Star Fleet Marine Corps in Star Fleet International. External links * *Parker Gabriel - Star Trek fan fiction stories 7-0791st MSG 791st MSG